Cassie and I went down to Knocknaree on a gray, mean afternoon, to see if the Savages or Alicia Rowan had anything new to tell us. We were both pretty badly hungover-this was the day after Carl and his internet freak show-and we talked very little in the car. Cassie drove; I stared out the window at leaves whipping in a fast, untrustworthy wind, spurts of drizzle spattering the glass. Neither of us was at all sure I should be there.
At the last minute, when we had turned onto my old road and Cassie was parking the car, I wimped out of going to Peter's house. This was not because the road had overwhelmed me with a sudden flood of memories, or anything like that-quite the contrary: it reminded me strongly of every other road in the estate, but that was about it, and this left me feeling off balance and at a strong disadvantage, as if Knocknaree had got one up on me yet again. I had spent an awful lot of time at Peter's house, and in some obscure way I felt his family was more likely to recognize me if I was unable to recognize them first.
I watched from the car as Cassie went up to Peter's door and rang the bell, and as a shadowy figure ushered her inside. Then I got out of the car and walked down the road to my old home. The address-11 Knocknaree Way, Knocknaree, County Dublin-came back to me in the automatic rattle of something learned off by rote.
It was smaller than I remembered; narrower; the lawn was a cramped little square rather than the vast, cool expanse of green I had been picturing. The paintwork had been redone not too long ago, gay butter-yellow with a white trim. Tall red and white rosebushes were dropping their last petals by the wall, and I wondered if my father had planted them. I looked up at my bedroom window and in that instant it clicked home: I had lived here. I had run out that door with my book bag on school mornings, leaned out of that window to yell down to Peter and Jamie, learned to walk in that garden. I had been riding my bike up and down this very road, until the moment when the three of us had climbed the wall at the end and run into the wood.
There was a neat little silver Polo in the driveway, and a blond kid, maybe three or four, was pedaling a plastic fire truck around it and making siren noises. When I reached the gate he stopped and gave me a long, solemn look.
"Hello," I said.
"Go away," he told me, eventually and firmly.
I wasn't sure how to respond to this, but as it turned out I didn't have to: the front door opened and the kid's mother-thirties, also blond, pretty in a standardized kind of way-hurried down the drive and put a protective hand on his head. "Can I help you?" she asked.
"Detective Robert Ryan," I said, finding my ID. "We're investigating the death of Katharine Devlin."
She took the ID and scrutinized it carefully. "I'm not sure how I can help," she said, handing it back to me. "We already talked to the other detectives. We didn't see anything; we barely know the Devlins."
Her eyes were still wary. The kid was starting to get bored, making vrooming noises under his breath and wiggling his steering wheel, but she held him in place with a hand on his shoulder. Faint, sparkling music-Vivaldi, I think-was drifting through the open front door, and for a moment I came dizzyingly close to asking her:
The mother watched me leave. As I got back into the car, I saw her scooping up the fire truck under one arm and the kid under the other and taking them both inside.
I sat in the car for a long time, looking out at the road and feeling that I would be able to deal with this a lot better if only my hangover would go away. At last Peter's door opened, and I heard voices: someone was walking Cassie down the drive. I whipped my head around and pretended to be staring in the opposite direction, deep in thought, until I heard the door close.
"Nothing new," Cassie said, leaning in at the car window. "Peter didn't mention being scared of anyone, or getting hassle from anyone. Smart kid, knew better than to go anywhere with a stranger; a little overconfident, though, which could have got him into trouble. They don't have any suspicions of anybody, except they wondered if it could be the same person who killed Katy. They were sort of upset about that."
"Aren't we all," I said.
"They seem like they're doing OK." I hadn't been able to bring myself to ask this, but I did want, rather badly, to know. "The father wasn't happy about having to go over it all again, but the mother was lovely. Peter's sister Tara still lives at home; she was asking after you."
